


with incendiary light

by whimsicalimages



Category: Naruto
Genre: Homecoming, Idiots in Love, M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-Chapter 699 (Naruto), Snakes, Talking Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 07:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15836802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicalimages/pseuds/whimsicalimages
Summary: Above him, there’s only a cloudless blue, familiar and very dear. Maybe itistime, Sasuke lets himself think, and the thought isn’t difficult or painful at all. It’s perilously close to being easy.





	with incendiary light

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the longsuffering [J](https://sighsaggressively.tumblr.com/), [M](http://productivity-is-irrelevant.tumblr.com/), and [A](http://hellaarabella.tumblr.com/) for cheerleading, and [J](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tumblingintowells) for browbeating this into better shape while yelling about Sasuke's dubious cocktail of younger-sibling-syndrome, PTSD, and depression. Title from Shearwater's [Pale Kings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo9p9wxbLa4). Needless to say, I do not recommend dealing with mental health issues the way Sasuke does in this fic (running away for 3 years) or in canon (running away for 12 years); I wrote what felt true of him, but I do wish he would seek a therapist.

Even deep in the mountain ranges of Lightning, there are small settlements. Sasuke thinks it’s probably the most populated of the great countries; in Wind, he had gone for weeks without seeing another person. Only scorpions and lizards and the endless harsh sun on the dunes. It had been – unpleasant, mostly, and he’d gotten all sorts of sunburn lines, but even unpleasant experience is valuable.

He keeps repeating it to himself: he’s trying to know the land as more than simply another factor to account for in a battle. He’s trying to live differently. If he holds the ideas in place, believes in them for long enough, he’ll be able to do it. It’s taken a few years, but he thinks he’s gotten a little closer.

“Anyone can sense the natural chakra around them,” Juugo had told him once. “It doesn’t matter if you can use senjutsu or not. It’s in the air.”

Sasuke must have looked skeptical, because Suigetsu had made a derisive noise. “I bet Aoda would teach you senjutsu if you were nicer to him, Sasuke,” he’d said, only to get immediately smacked in the head by Karin.

“How do you sense it?” Sasuke had asked, ignoring Suigetsu and Karin.

Juugo had frowned, then closed his eyes and turned his face to the sky for a moment, and then looked back and shrugged helplessly. “It’s like a song being played through several layers of rock. You can always hear a trace, but you have to concentrate to get the melody.”

“Regular fuckin’ poet,” Suigetsu had muttered.

Sasuke thinks he almost understands what Juugo had meant, now. The earth under his feet changes in every place, sand shifting to grass shifting to stone. People have made homes on tough, inaccessible slopes and on the shores of unlikely desert lakes, in strange and far-flung acts of defiance against nature, but everywhere he goes there’s that faint hum that he’d heard clearly exactly once, roaring around the Sage. There’s an energy everywhere, something he can’t quite touch but knows is there.

In the foothills south of Lightning’s famously inhospitable mountains, he’s almost overrun by a herd of goats when he stops to polish off the last of the real food he’d bought in the tiny town he’d passed through several days ago. He’s been saving it, not looking forward to the impending necessity of switching to soldier pills.

The goats smell like dung, and they’re relentless in their pursuit of the sparse tufts of grass growing on the slope. Their shepherdess, wiry and grey-haired, follows them.

“You’re a long way from home, shinobi,” the woman says, hiking up to where he sits.

He tenses ever-so-slightly. Does she know who he is? She doesn’t move like a shinobi.

She snorts. “Relax,” she says. “I have no quarrel with you unless you have one with me. Besides, I’m a civilian. There’s little I could do to attack you, short of asking my goats to eat your hair.”

“I have no quarrel,” Sasuke says quickly.

“That is well,” she replies. “If you’re looking for shinobi work, you may want to look elsewhere. It’s been peaceful here in the mountains for years. Even the war hardly touched us.”

Sasuke shakes his head. “I’m not looking for work. Only passing through.” He’d been hoping to make it to the ocean before the Island Turtle moved on; Naruto had told him where to find it in his last letter, along with a lengthy tangent about the Falls of Truth, which Sasuke would refuse to admit piqued his curiosity.

She grins. “We are a people hard as stone, but we always have comfort for those who seek it,” she says. Sasuke has seen those words before – they’re inscribed on one of the entrances to Kumogakure. “The electricity is never certain here because of the thunderstorms, and our village is small, but my home has running water, if you are tired from your journeying.”

He finds himself honestly considering it. He’s hoping that Bee will be busy helping Kumogakure with the chuunin exams, but maybe he can pick up more reliable information from the villagers, who should know more about one of their heroes. For all of Naruto’s assurances that the other jinchuuriki was “just the coolest,” Sasuke has been studiously avoiding anyone who might recognize him from the War, and particularly avoiding shinobi he fought against. While he has no real interest in needlessly interacting with civilians, he has even less interest in being punched off the Island Turtle by someone he can’t hit back without risking the eggshell-fragile international peace.

“I would appreciate that,” he says.

“My name is Konishi Matsu,” she says.

“Hideki,” Sasuke offers.  

Matsu raises an eyebrow at the obviously-false name, but doesn’t say anything about it. “Well, my herd is on its way home, Hideki-san. You’re welcome to follow. My son usually makes enough food to feed ten people, and he was at market today.”

He stands, stretches briefly, and shoulders his bag. “Thank you.”

“We don’t get many visitors up here, and it’s nice to play host,” Matsu says, before frowning out at the threatening clouds in the eastern sky. She curses under her breath. “We’ll have to set a quick pace if we want to outrun the rain.”

They move at a faster clip than Sasuke had thought a large number of goats could over rocky terrain, until they come upon a small shelter rigged up by an enclosure. The goats seem to know what to do from there, filing in as the first drops begin to fall. Sasuke can feel the lightning building above them, dry and radiant.

Matsu shoos the remaining goats into their pen and then makes an impatient gesture at Sasuke. “Come,” she says. “These spring storms don’t last long, but getting caught in one will get you soaked faster than jumping into the river.”

She makes her way to the house nearby, where someone has a light on. “Yatarou,” she calls. “We have a guest!”

“Oh, you made it before the rain!” a man’s voice replies, followed by the man himself peeking his head out the window. His eyes widen at the sight of Sasuke, and he bows his head briefly. “Shinobi-san, welcome.”

Sasuke blinks.

Matsu chuckles, holding the door for him. “We’re civilians, but we’re not stupid. And Yatarou’s sister, my eldest, tested with a wind affinity when she was seven. She’ll officially be a jounin of Kumogakure next year, I hope.”

“You said the war didn’t touch you,” Sasuke says, not making it into a question.

“I said it didn’t touch us _here_ ,” Matsu corrects. “My daughter was part of the Alliance forces, but she was still barely a chuunin then, she’d passed the last pre-war exams. The Raikage had all but the most advanced chuunin running messages and supplies.”

“I see,” Sasuke says. He feels like he’s lived a whole lifetime in the confines of the seven years between his own ill-fated chuunin exams and now. Outside, the rain is coming down hard enough that it sounds like hail on the roof.

“Bee-sama gave many of them field promotions, of course, but those were emergency circumstances,” Matsu continues. “Yatarou, do you need help?”

“No, I’m almost done! Five minutes!”

“Is your daughter away helping Bee and the Raikage with Kumo’s chuunin exams?” Sasuke asks.

Matsu raises her eyebrows at him. “On familiar terms with Bee-sama, are you? Yes, she’s there now. The last week of the exams, we’ll go to the village for the ending festival.” She pauses, narrows her eyes at him. “I hope you’re not asking because you have a vendetta to settle with Kumogakure or with Bee-sama. He’s a hero, you know.”

She’s observant, for a civilian. Sasuke hopes she can’t read the _‘once I tried to capture him so the mercenary organization that almost destroyed the world could extract the demon in his head, but I’ve since realized that was the wrong way to go about things’_ on his face.

“Peace,” he says, raising his hand. “I have no vendettas.” Anymore, he doesn’t add.  

“Well,” Matsu says. “Then make yourself useful, and set the table, Hideki-san. Plates are in that cabinet over there.”

When Yatarou comes out with the food, he gapes at his mother correcting Sasuke’s place settings. “He’s a guest!”

“And I’m the head of this house, and I know how to lay a place setting, while this young man clearly never has,” Matsu replies.

Sasuke doesn’t correct her, since the last time he set a dinner table properly was before the massacre. Their amicable bickering washes over him – it’s nice, he thinks. It feels warm.

-

In the morning, as he runs through a basic kata before sunrise, a messenger hawk lands on his arm. Almost definitely Naruto, wasting ink to tell him something mundane about village life. Sometimes, when Sasuke reads these, he catches himself smiling at the words and has to school his face back to impassivity.

The hawk nips at his ear when he doesn’t immediately detach the message from its leg. “Relax,” Sasuke mumbles as he untangles the knot. Even his own hawks don’t seem to like him much, and other birds are downright antagonistic. Maybe it’s his original and longstanding affiliation with snakes. 

He was right – Naruto’s terrible penmanship, on about some boring assignment or other from Kakashi in his endless quest to prepare their inevitable future Hokage. Sasuke never writes back, although he has replied with several shitty souvenirs sent in moments of weakness. There was a fox figurine he saw in a tourist shop in Hot Water Country, and a blue bauble that looked like a Rasengan from the glassblowers’ district in Suna. A postcard with a comically inaccurate depiction of Naruto’s face and the words “Miracle Boy,” on which Sasuke had overwritten the “Miracle” with “Idiot.”

He’s written full letters to Kakashi when he’s come across information that might be valuable – he has the vague notion that Konoha needs someone like him to be its eyes, even during peacetime, though it’s not something he’s ready to dedicate himself to because he hasn’t yet learned the trick of thinking further than a month or two ahead – but writing to Naruto seems beyond him. Somehow the words are never right.

The hawk pecks him again. Sasuke rolls his eyes. “All right,” he tells it, and ducks into the house. Yatarou is chopping onions in the kitchen. “Yatarou-san, is there any fish left over from yesterday?”

Yatarou turns, and startles at the hawk. It watches him, eyes golden and beady. “Of course,” he says. “Please, help yourself. I packed you a bento for the road.”

“Thank you,” Sasuke says, retrieving the box, and breaks off a piece of fish to give the bird.

The hawk gulps it down and immediately fixes him with a glare. He glares back until it becomes clear that neither of them are backing down. Fucking birds. He feeds it another piece.

“There,” Sasuke mutters. “Now you can’t tell Naruto or the Hokage that I treat you badly.” Most of Konoha’s hawks don’t talk to humans, but some do, and he knows they talk amongst themselves. Gods only know what Naruto would tell his summons, and Sasuke has a very hazy understanding of the shared world that the summons inhabit but he knows that _somehow_ his own hawks would find out and exact some sort of petty revenge upon him.

Matsu has come in while he was arguing with the bird, and when he looks up, she and Yatarou are both staring at him, Yatarou bewildered and Matsu shrewd.

“You’re Uchiha Sasuke,” Yatarou says faintly. “My mother gave a lecture on place settings to Uchiha Sasuke.”

“I did,” Matsu says. She tilts her head. “You disappeared after the war. How did you end up here?”

I didn’t disappear, I just stopped looking like the propaganda posters, he thinks. He could tell a million lies out of habit, out of the desire to be forgotten. He could cast a genjutsu, easy as breathing, and make a simple escape. Instead, he tells the truth. “I wanted to see what the world was like,” Sasuke says. “I never really knew, and I wanted to find out for myself.”

“Have you found out?” Matsu asks.

Sasuke thinks about it. “Not yet,” he says. “But I think I’ve gotten closer.” 

“That’s good. Will you go back, once you’ve found out? Back to Konohagakure?”

“Stop pestering him!” Yatarou hisses.

“It’s fine. I don’t know,” Sasuke says, but this time it’s mostly a lie. He thinks. Maybe.

Matsu smiles. “At least you’re being honest now, _Hideki-san_. Shinobi and your paranoia.”

“I didn’t want your goats to eat my hair,” Sasuke says dryly.

“Uchiha Sasuke makes jokes?” Yatarou half-whispers in disbelief.

Matsu cuffs him on the back of the head. “Don’t be rude. The coast is due south of here, Uchiha Sasuke,” she says, taking pity.

“Thank you,” he says, and is surprised to find that he means it, and he means it when he says it again after Yatarou determinedly pushes the bento into his hand as he’s walking away.

“You young people are all so dramatic,” he hears Matsu tell her son. “He’s just a foolish boy! I hope he goes back to that other one soon, I heard in the marketplace last week that they’ll make him Hokage in the spring.”

Next spring – he has plenty of time. He thinks the shape of the future is coming into view.

-

He doesn’t run into Bee on the Island Turtle, where the birds hate him even more than the birds on the mainland do. He sits and meditates at the Falls of Truth, and feels a little ridiculous when no other version of himself appears, despite what Naruto had said. Perhaps it’s a jinchuuriki-exclusive experience. Or perhaps this is just the version he’s stuck with, and the world is telling him there’s no magic mirror of all his doubts to physically defeat in order to move past. Fighting a personification of his issues did always seem like a quintessentially _Naruto_ method of self-improvement, anyway.

For him, well – all he has is what he has, and he can’t kill his lingering hatred or pain with one stroke. Maybe only with patience, though that’s unsatisfying. Maybe with help, but that’s even worse to contemplate.

But maybe he’s ready to start or to continue or to keep going now. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Before he drops out of the meditation, he catches his own reflection in the water. He looks – almost calm.  

-

Between Hot Water and Frost, he rests for a moment in the enormous bamboo forest that covers large swathes of the border. It’s the depths of summer, but it’s cool in the grove. The air is different, clean. He thinks the life which has been happening around him for twenty years feels close enough to grasp.

 _Itachi_ , he thinks. _One day, I’m going to tell you about the freshness of the air around the bamboo, and about the heat of the sand in the desert, and about the hard brightness of the thunderstorms in the mountains. I’ll tell you about the ocean flats, and the farmers’ fields, and the energy that exists in the world which is bigger than me or anyone. It makes the land feel vast and alive._

A bright green snake slithers out of the trees as he’s finishing his water. Its tongue flickers out, seeking, and it fixes him with a stare. He allows himself a sigh, but still cups his palm to pour some water into it. The snake drinks carefully and bobs its head at him.

Well, Suigetsu’s always telling him he should be nicer to his snakes. And his hawks. Much as Sasuke would never admit it, maybe he has a point.

“Thank you,” the snake says. “I am named Komugi.”

Sasuke inclines his head. “Uchiha Sasuke,” he says. “Can all the snakes in this forest speak?”

He gets the distinct impression that the snake is looking at him like he’s an idiot. “You’re the one who can summon Aoda-ji-san, don’t you know? This forest hides an entrance to Ryuuchi Cave, home of the White Snake Sage, who teaches all of us human speech. Are you not here to learn from her? I can guide you there! I can guide you to the cave.”

Sasuke shrugs. “I was stopping to rest. I didn’t mean to stay long in the forest.”

“You’re a very strange human,” Komugi informs him. “Sage-sama is always telling us that humans want more power, but you smell like you do not want it.”

“I’m not looking for more power,” Sasuke says, honestly. He hasn’t been in years. Since he decided to go Naruto’s way, to trust the slow human healing of the world.

“You must not be very smart,” Komugi says, curling up around his arm. “Power allows you to catch many rats and lay many eggs!”

“Humans don’t lay eggs.”

“Of course they do,” Komugi asserts with unfounded confidence.

“Komugi, you are far too bold, and too curious,” a new voice says, deep and well-known. Aoda emerges from the trees, bowing his head to Sasuke. “Sasuke-sama. Are you here looking for Ryuuchi Cave?”

“No,” he says. “I didn’t know it was here.”

Aoda hums in agreement, and the ground vibrates around him. “I apologize, I didn’t warn my clan to leave you to your travels,” he says. “Komugi is still a little one.”

“He doesn’t seem very important, oji-san,” Komugi says, doubtful.

“Be polite,” Aoda warns.

“He seems nice! He lets me drink his water.”

Aoda dips his nose in a gesture Sasuke has always thought of as the snake’s version of rolling his eyes. “Be _polite_ ,” he repeats. 

Komugi dutifully turns back to him. “You seem odd, Uchiha Sasuke, but you are very warm. I can guide you out of the forest, if you really don’t want to go to see the Sage.”

His internal compass is near-flawless; he isn’t particularly worried about getting out of the forest. “I would like that,” he says, instead of saying so.

Aoda observes the exchange silently, tongue flickering once, and then appears to dismiss this as human peculiarity. “Safe travels, Sasuke-sama.”

“Thank you,” he says, then turns to Komugi as the big snake slides back into the bamboo. “Can you tell me about the trees while we walk?”

Komugi rears up with pride. “Oji-san says I know the most out of all of my nestmates, I know the whole history of this forest!”

Sasuke hides his amusement, and listens.

-

Kusagakure’s walls are designed along the same lines as Konoha’s – watchtowers at strategic points and the solid promise of protection, though it didn’t help much during the Third War. Sasuke is standing on one of the towers in broad daylight with a simple genjutsu to cover his position, but he’s not especially worried about being noticed. He hasn’t made any enemies in Kusa, probably. None that he feels inclined to be wary of.

Besides, he’s waiting for something.

The grassland around Kusa stretches out as far as he can see, an enormous green carpet. It makes him feel obscurely as if he’s seeing the ocean for the first time again, small and insignificant in the face of it.

He has a second’s warning, a known chakra barreling towards him but without any malice. He stays perfectly still. “I should have known,” Ino says, landing soundlessly next to him. “Feels like I can’t go on a mission fucking anywhere without running into some trace of you, and now I finally caught up with the real thing. You’ve been all over the place fixing problems that aren’t yours.”

“You’re early,” Sasuke says.

“I’m a forward scout,” Ino corrects. “Shikamaru’s a paranoid bastard, but he’s a thorough one.”

“I heard you were running the flower shop.”

Ino makes an affronted noise. “I’m an excellent multitasker, and Sakura isn’t the only one who trained under Tsunade-sama, you know. Plus, as Yamanaka clan head, it’s important that I’m here to ‘strengthen diplomatic ties’ and ‘improve perceptions of Konoha abroad.’” She sounds like she’s directly parroting a lecture from someone.

Clan head, he thinks, then. “I’m sorry about your father,” Sasuke says. He thinks it’s what you’re supposed to say, in this type of situation, and he hadn’t stuck around Konoha long enough to go to the funerals and say it then. Certainly enough people had said it to him as a child.

“Thank you,” Ino says stiffly, then shakes her head and smiles anyway. “Never goes away, huh? All we’ve got is the hope that they’d be proud of us. But yeah, I’m helping with the hospital project in my official capacity as clan head, technically.”

“And to gather intel, and because Sakura will be here,” Sasuke says. He’s not exactly in touch with the Konoha 11, but he’s still capable of observation.

“And to gather intel – though I know you’ve done quite a lot of that work for us – and because Sakura will be here,” Ino agrees, looking out at the plains. The grass waves gently as the Konoha delegation makes its way towards Kusa, invisible to eyes unaccustomed to peering through genjutsu. “For a whole season! It’ll be winter by the time we’re back, and then we’ll have to start preparations for Naruto’s inauguration in the spring. It’s going to be a total nightmare at the shop. I kept telling Sakura to stop taking 48-hour shifts, but a three-month-long mission to bring Kusa’s hospital up to scratch wasn’t what I had in mind. Shikamaru’s sick of being Kakashi’s assistant, he only swapped with me for this because I have fifteen years of blackmail on him. And because Sakura and I are married now.” She glances at Sasuke, as if daring him to object.

“I’m glad she has you watching her back,” he offers, because he _is_ , he’s fiercely glad and proud in a way he couldn’t really explain if he wanted to. Sakura deserves to be happy.

He still has no real intention of staying long enough to speak with her or any of his former classmates, hadn’t expected Ino to jump the line. He’d wanted to wait and see, to make sure everything would go smoothly. He’d spent a week in the tea shops in Kusa’s shinobi district sniffing out rumors of discontent with the village taking charity from Konoha, but he hadn’t turned up anything more serious than idle civilian grumbling. People here are relaxed. For a shinobi village, it doesn’t have the sense of jumpy battle-readiness he’s used to.

Ino punches his shoulder, bringing him back to the real world. She scowls, crossing her arms. “Who the hell else was going to do it? You’re out finding yourself even though Naruto found you years ago, and he’s too busy learning how to be Hokage. Sakura deserves better than either of you. Or me, but at least I’m _there_.”

The words don’t cut – they’re only truth, and Sasuke isn’t particularly afraid of that anymore, most of the time. “That can be enough,” Sasuke says. “Congratulations on the wedding.”

Ino deflates. “We sent you an invitation with one of the hawks. Sakura thought you might come after all – but I could tell from the way Naruto smiled that you wouldn’t. It’s like he has a sixth sense for where you are at any given time. Your weird mental bond would be cute if it wasn’t so frustrating, and if we all hadn’t gotten used to Naruto yelling about it while you were busy going insane and trying to murder your friends. He still yells about it sometimes, if you get enough sake in him to override the healing factor.” She looks skyward, as if asking for answers. “Nothing ever really changes.”

“Some things change,” Sasuke says. He’s been working on believing that for the past three years. For the past however many thousands of footsteps he’s taken. He doesn’t know if he’s gotten there yet, but maybe he’s gotten a bit closer.

Ino squints at him. “Yeah,” she says slowly. “You don’t seem like you’re trying to murder anyone, anymore.”

“I’m not,” Sasuke confirms.

“That’s good. You on your way home?”

Sasuke hesitates, and Ino gives him a vividly unimpressed look, before sighing. “All men are so dense,” she says. “It’s only a day’s hard run from here to the walls, a couple days if you break for food.”

He knows. Across all the distance he’s covered, there’s always been a compass in him pointing the way. “Yeah,” he says.

Ino peers at him, then nods at whatever she reads there. “Good,” she says, and then turns back as the Konoha delegation uncovers itself at a peaceful range of two-hundred paces.

Sakura is in the lead, with Kiba and Akamaru flanking her. Ino’s whole face changes with an expression so joyful that it makes Sasuke’s cheeks burn, and she spins her wedding ring absently. He wonders if she even knows she’s doing it, and looks down at the opening gates to stop seeing things that feel private.

Above him, there’s only a cloudless blue, familiar and very dear. Maybe it _is_ time, he lets himself think, and the thought isn’t difficult or painful at all. It’s perilously close to being easy.

-

The main part of the Naka River shrine remained unharmed during the war, and that’s where he walks back into Konoha at long last, not as an invader or an enemy, but as something else. He doesn’t dare name the feeling, thoughts slipping around the words, but it doesn’t matter – somewhere in his bones he knows that this time is different. Maybe he’s known for months, through the desert and the mountains and the fields. Even the wind seems to push him forward, like a guiding hand on his back as he walks carefully across the Naka. The river rushes fast and high despite the dry season, and it thrums under his feet, singing a welcome to its wanderer son.

Inside the shrine, it’s quieter, sounds from outside muffled. The hidden door at the back opens easily at his touch, and he lights the lanterns on the walls as he goes down the steps.

The only thing left in the lower chamber is the Sage’s stone and the stillness of the chakra-rich air. Itachi had told him once that the walls were built to enclose and amplify natural chakra, so that Uchiha who came with offerings and prayers could focus without any distractions.

Nobody had ever thought to bring a chisel down into the shrine because nobody had known about Kaguya or Zetsu or any of it, so Sasuke had purchased one in Kusa. He didn’t stop anywhere in Fire Country; he’s too recognizable. Even so, word has likely already made its way here ahead of him – Ino undoubtedly included him in her first report.

He’s loath to use any fire jutsu surrounded by so much wood, but instinct tells him the chisel won’t cut unless it’s purified, so he breathes a small katon over it and gets to work. Time passes slowly while he cuts away at the additions Zetsu had made, erasing a story that had never been true. By the time he lays down the tools and emerges from the shrine, the sun has set.

Naruto is leaning against one of the posts in front of the building and watching the Naka flow, water now a nearly-black ribbon on the earth. Sasuke can’t bring himself to be surprised, but he feels a wave of unbearable gratitude that Naruto hadn’t tried to come into the shrine. For all that Sasuke has venerated his heritage and all that he has desecrated it, it’s still his, and his alone, now. Finally.

“I knew you’d come here first when you got back,” Naruto says lightly, turning to face him. His eyes glint in the darkness, and he’s wearing a jounin flak jacket over the usual orange for once. He looks tired but satisfied. Just home from a mission? There’s no blood on him but one of his sleeves has a rip below the shoulder, showing the line where the bandages start. Something in the way that he carries himself has changed, a new gravity that feels exactly like the old gravity to Sasuke, who has always been susceptible to it, but now it’s stronger, a force as unchangeable as the direction of the river. As steady as the ground they stand on.

All these thoughts occur to Sasuke at the same time, impacting with the approximate subtlety of Juugo unleashing the full power of his senjutsu on an enemy.

“How did you know I would come at all?” he asks, instead of saying any of it.

“Obviously because I know _you_ , asshole,” Naruto says, as if that’s any kind of explanation. “I knew you were coming back, or I would have chased you across the whole fucking continent. Again. Wouldn’t have even let you go. It was just a matter of when, this time.”

Just a matter of when? _The Uchiha are a clan possessed by evil_ , the Second had said. _Because their love is too powerful and drives them to madness._ Clearly, he’d never met anyone like Naruto, who remains singularly insane, out of all the insane people Sasuke has met or been. Even with the weight of the Sage’s words, the reincarnations, the endless repetition and the destiny that had felt like a trap closing shut when he’d first learned about it, Sasuke is the living proof that the curse of the Uchiha isn’t incurable. All he needed was to find someone crazy enough to outshine it.

“Yeah,” Sasuke says. At a loss, he starts heading for the gate leading out of the Uchiha district and into the village, and Naruto falls into step with him as if they haven’t spent the last few years in different countries, as if there’s been no distance between them at all.

“Heard you ran into Ino in Kusa,” Naruto says.

“I did,” Sasuke says. “It wasn’t intentional.”

Naruto snorts. “I’ll bet,” he says, and then smiles. The expression looks ridiculous on his face. Sasuke wants to cover it with a mask so that nobody else can see it and – he doesn’t know, exploit it, and he has to smother the abrupt urge to run back the direction he came, to keep running and not stop before reaching the border of Fire Country. He walks forward. He’s many things, but he isn’t a coward.

“She and Sakura-chan are happy, which I’m sure even an emotionally-stunted person like you noticed. They make each other happy,” Naruto says. “Which is good, because Shikamaru almost had a heart attack out of stress when he was organizing security for their wedding, and if it hadn’t worked out I think he would have tried to kill one of them, and gone to jail, and I need him to help me sort through paperwork when I’m Hokage.”

‘Tried’ being the operative word, Sasuke supposes. “It’s good that he didn’t.”

“Sure is,” Naruto says. “You do know Sakura’s gonna punch you through a wall when she’s back because you didn’t show up to her wedding, right? She’s almost as scary as Tsunade-baa-chan, now.”

He’s well-aware. “I’m glad I avoided her in Kusa, then.”

“Bastard,” Naruto says, but it’s as fond as ever. He folds his hands behind his head as they walk, and that, too, sets off a small avalanche of memory in the back of Sasuke’s mind.

People wave and smile at Naruto as they walk, ignoring Sasuke at his side. Does he look so different, or is it the way everyone’s attention follows Naruto like a lodestar? It feels like walking next to a forest fire, but he doesn’t find himself resenting it. He thinks of the lightning in the mountains, the way that it left the air clean.

“Want dinner? No idea what you’ve been living on, but we can go to Ichiraku, or I’ve got leftovers at home. I know you’ve got some sort of weird and unnatural hatred for ramen, but–”

“Ichiraku is fine,” Sasuke interrupts. Naruto’s eyes widen, and Sasuke elbows him. He debates for a half-second before continuing. “Don’t look so surprised, moron. A good Hokage accounts for all possibilities.”

He looks away and makes the turn for Ichiraku, but not fast enough to avoid seeing the look of pure delight that crosses Naruto’s features. “Damn right,” Naruto says cheerfully, slinging an arm across Sasuke’s shoulders as they walk. “And I’m gonna be the best!”

“Of course,” Sasuke says, having trouble injecting even a trace of irony. Maybe there’s something wrong with him.

Teuchi does a double take at seeing them come in together, but to his credit, he just beams at Naruto like a proud father and doesn’t say anything hideously sentimental. “Your usual, Naruto-kun? And Uchiha-san, still like tonkotsu ramen?”

Sasuke blinks, thrown off-kilter at the man’s long memory. “Yes, thank you,” he says, after Naruto’s own enthusiastic agreement.

“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you be polite to someone you didn’t hate,” Naruto says, shit-eating grin firmly in place.

“I’m very polite,” Sasuke lies, then gets distracted by the steaming bowl placed in front of him.

The stand is otherwise empty the whole time they’re eating – he’s not naïve enough to think people are staying away from Naruto, Hero of Konoha, which means they’re most likely staying away from Uchiha Sasuke, the village’s most infamous semi-reformed missing-nin.

Or someone’s keeping them away. A pair of dark eyes watches them as they leave, the replacement they’d found for Sasuke’s spot on Team 7 giving him a patently false smile before slipping back into the shadows. A brief tension flits over Naruto’s face but he doesn’t break in his stream of aimless gossip about the village.

They walk past Shikamaru, Hinata, Chouji, and Tenten, all of whom wave at Naruto and then lock wary eyes with Sasuke as they stroll by. Message received, he thinks, suppressing the urge to grit his teeth. How any of them made jounin is a mystery, because the remains of the Konoha 11 aren’t even remotely subtle, and his patience has worn out. He’d thought perhaps he could manage to avoid all of them despite the impracticalities that would present, but they’re making it difficult. He jumps onto the nearest rooftop, ignoring Naruto’s indignant squawk.

“They’re just overprotective,” Naruto says after they’ve made their way over a few more rooftops.

Sasuke stops, shooting him a sideways glance. “They’re right to be. I did put a hand through your chest once,” he says, as if he himself doesn’t have nightmares about it. He suspects he’s lived in that moment more than Naruto has.

“Yeah, yeah, the great and terrible Uchiha Sasuke,” Naruto says, eyeroll almost audible in his voice as he keeps walking, towing Sasuke along by his empty sleeve. “I thought the point of your whole three-year self-improvement journey was that you wouldn’t be such a moody bastard when you got back. I know you tried to kill me but, in case you forgot, you couldn’t do it, and if you haven’t managed it yet, you aren’t going to. If everyone spent years beating themselves up about the shit they did at age thirteen, nobody would get anywhere.”

Typical. “Most people aren’t murderous psychopaths at age thirteen,” Sasuke tries. “Or sixteen.”

“Wannabe murderous, wannabe psychopaths,” Naruto amends. “Anyway, you’re better now. You’ve even got a pardon, you’re welcome for that!” He grins. Something in Sasuke’s chest lurches uncomfortably. “And if you tried anything crazy, I’d stop you again. But I don’t think you will, because you seem – well, you seem good. You seem like you went and figured out how to be a little more like a real person. It’s kind of weird, to be honest.”

“What does that even mean?”

Naruto makes an indecipherable gesture at him, looks up, looks at the street, then meets Sasuke’s eyes. “It means you’re finally breathing,” he says, lifting his false hand and tapping Sasuke’s chest with a finger, above his heart. He pauses, before setting his jaw and continuing. “I think maybe it means you found some of what you were looking for.”

“Naruto,” he begins, and then cuts himself off. The streetlights turn Naruto more golden than usual, and his hand is still on Sasuke’s chest, and Sasuke has been moving for so long that he thinks he’s forgotten how to stand still, how to accept the current rather than pushing against it, even though that’s why he’s _here_ for the first time in years. Naruto is the river that has shaped his entire stupid life, snuck into his bloodstream and wore away at him until he became maybe not someone better but someone who wanted to be better, and he can’t even admit it in words that make any sense outside his head.

“Come on,” Naruto says, and tugs him down to a balcony below. “This is me.”

All his blood is ringing in his ears. He would give any of his remaining limbs to have an ounce of Naruto’s determination, because three years hasn’t given him that. Twenty years hasn’t given him that. Can this really be as easy as Naruto thinks it is?

“You coming in or what?” Naruto asks, impatient. Sasuke thinks about the wind chimes in Suna and the bamboo filtering the light green into the forest. Is it this easy? The air feels dry and crisp as an autumn leaf from one of Konoha’s great oaks, and Sasuke thinks he might not be getting enough oxygen to his brain because something is short-circuiting here. Can it be as easy as this?

“Oi, Sasuke,” Naruto says, snapping his fingers in front of Sasuke’s eyes. He huffs in exasperation when Sasuke blinks at him and doesn’t move. “I’m right here. Have your freak-out about the future later, and not on my balcony.”

“I didn’t ask you to wait for me,” Sasuke says, because for all the learning he’s done, he hasn’t learned how to not say the first thought in his mind in a stressful situation, which is without fail always the wrong thing to say.

“You never ask for anything,” Naruto says. “Sakura says it’s because you don’t know how, but I think it’s because you’re an idiot.”

Both are probably right.

“I,” he starts again. What was the point of crisscrossing the world for so long if he can’t even say something so simple, can’t even voice a truth he’s known for almost eight years? He already knows that he wants whatever Naruto is offering, that he’ll take absolutely anything Naruto is willing to give because he’s been running for years and it never got him anywhere he wanted to be more than he wants to be right here, in this place and time. He clears his throat, trying to formulate a way to say that out loud and failing. “Naruto.”

Naruto drags a hand through his hair. Sasuke wants to follow it with his own, and then he wants to smack himself for thinking about it. Much good is his hard-won peace of mind doing him. “Sasuke, I _know_. I told you earlier, I know you, all right? You don’t have to say whatever you’re trying to say, because I already know it.”

Sasuke finds his voice at that. “You read minds now?”

“Reading yours is easy,” Naruto retorts, then turns and hops into his apartment.

Sasuke can only follow as Naruto goes to his tiny kitchen and puts the kettle on, apparently out of habit. There are framed photos – candid shots of the Konoha 11, Gaara making some sort of sand animal for a little girl, a startled-looking Kakashi in his robes of office, Iruka ducking out of the storefront of Ichiraku, the original genin photo of Team 7 – all over the walls. Every tacky souvenir Sasuke has sent back is here, too, lined up along the kitchen windowsill. Even the horrible Miracle Boy postcard.

Naruto follows his gaze and laughs a bit. “Kakashi-sensei loved that one,” he says, before picking up the small blue glass ball. Sasuke had noticed it in the shop because the seals around the edges made it spin like a Rasengan. He gathers the courage left in him and finds that it could be enough. Maybe now. “But I think I liked this the best. Nobody would believe me if I said that the serious, heartless Uchiha Sasuke was actually a big sentimental marshmallow.”

Maybe now, he thinks again – maybe while the kettle is boiling, while Naruto is looking at him like that in this strange bubble of quiet and warmth in his apartment. “I think I should be offended,” Sasuke says mildly.

He takes the piece of glass from Naruto’s hand and places it back on the windowsill. Naruto lets him, still smiling in his effervescent, overwhelming way. In ten years, or twenty, he’s going to have crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. Sasuke has the bewildering notion that he wants to be around to see that, followed by the even more harrowing desire for Naruto to smile like that because of him. It can’t be helped, he supposes. ‘Maybe now’ solidifies into a definite.

“Sasuke–” Naruto says, and Sasuke cuts him off with his mouth. Naruto isn’t fazed, pushing back immediately and cupping Sasuke’s face in careful hands. His thumb runs deliberately along Sasuke’s cheekbone and every nerve ending in Sasuke’s body is suddenly alight, like he’s fallen into deep water and forgotten how to swim. Naruto makes a noise of frustration and presses him into the wall like he’s trying to push through it, and Sasuke feels he has been gloriously, comprehensively understood.

He’s been such a fool, Sasuke thinks. He could have had this for years if he hadn’t spent so long chasing a future someone else thought of for him, if he hadn’t been afraid of wanting something for his own, if he’d just grabbed Naruto by the shoulders and _stayed_ for once.

“Fucking finally,” Naruto breathes when they come up for air. Sasuke raises an eyebrow at him.

Naruto’s hands have migrated into his hair, pinning him into place more effectively than any jutsu. Naruto scowls, and even that is awful and endearing. Sasuke takes a moment to reflect on the sheer magnitude of how fucked he is, was, and has been from the start, before Naruto starts talking again. “Years, asshole. Years! Yeah, you didn’t ask me to wait, and let’s get this clear, I didn’t–” he breaks off, seeing the look of hastily-hidden jealousy-guilt that must cross Sasuke’s face. “Okay, relax, the point is, you’re here now, and I’m here now, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve lost track of how many times I imagined this. Get it? You good?”

“Yeah,” Sasuke says, voice hoarse. “Yes.”

“Good,” Naruto says, nods, and pulls Sasuke along with him to his room, and Sasuke – well, Sasuke never even tried to keep track, so he goes. He thinks briefly that something new or maybe something old or something he’d already known right down to the center of him might be blooming in his chest, and then, for a while, he doesn’t think much at all besides one word, in endless circles: finally. _Finally_.

-

He wakes up automatically before dawn, swinging his legs out of bed before he even considers the fact that he doesn’t have anywhere to be. The motion doesn’t wake Naruto; Sasuke thinks he could be radiating killing intent and still not wake Naruto.

He loses his battle against the small smile threatening to slip out, and leaves one of his kunai on the bedside table. If Naruto wakes up and finds him gone, he’ll know that he hasn’t gone far.

The Monument isn’t so big, now. Growing up with it looming overhead, Sasuke had always thought of it as something too huge to really fathom, but it’s simply stone, in the end. One day, a stone with Naruto’s face on it, for all the world to see. Climbing it is easy, and the air is clear, and he can’t find it in himself to care that he’s getting dust on Naruto’s borrowed pajama bottoms.

He sees Kiba and Akamaru at the top before he gets there and thinks about turning back, but he knows they must have noticed him by now, and leaving would feel like giving up. His feet carry him forward until Akamaru barks once and then runs at him, barely stopping in time to not bowl him over. Instead, the dog nudges him in the stomach, stands on hind legs and licks a long stripe up his face.

Akamaru has very large teeth, Sasuke thinks faintly. Somehow they’re more threatening than Aoda’s enormous fangs.

“Akamaru!” Kiba calls. “Get back here!”

Akamaru yips and trots back, and Sasuke follows, feeling slightly absurd. It’s only _Kiba_. He’s not a serious threat.

“Sasuke,” Kiba says, nodding in acknowledgement.

“Kiba,” Sasuke says, since evidently they’re speaking now, and on a first-name basis. He barely spoke to Kiba even when they sat three desks apart at the Academy.

Kiba huffs when he doesn’t say anything else. “Right, talkative as ever. Welcome back, you should know that I’m mostly here because I drew the short straw even though I’m only back from Kusa for a week. Shikamaru seemed like he might still try to kill you if he tried to have this conversation, Sai would _definitely_ try to kill you or you’d kill him, our esteemed Lord Hokage would rather throw himself off the Monument than talk about emotions, and Shino and Tenten and I agreed that it was probably for the best that none of that happened, so,” he says, spreading his arms expansively. “Here I am.”

“Conversation?”

“It was supposed to be more of a shovel-talk style lecture,” Kiba says. “But I don’t know, I feel like you probably beat the shit out of yourself for long enough that it would be useless. I could tell you that we’d all be ready to gut you in a second if you break Naruto’s heart, but I think you already know that, because you’re supposed to be a genius or something. I’m mostly here so I can tell Shikamaru that I talked to you, so he can unclench for five minutes.”

“I see,” Sasuke says. He doesn’t; he hasn’t kept track of the interpersonal politics of the people he left behind and expected to continue to successfully evade. Naruto is the reason he’s here at all, the one bond he couldn’t snap with distance or time or strength.

“Do you?” Kiba asks, peering at him. Sasuke keeps his face as expressionless as possible.

Kiba glances over at Akamaru, who barks twice and wags his tail. “Akamaru says you’re full of shit, but that he likes you anyway, so I guess you’re fine. Won’t call the ANBU to chase your ass out of the village.”

“You’re going to trust me based on the word of your dog?”

“Akamaru is an excellent judge of character,” Kiba says. “Also, Naruto’s gonna start bashing skulls if he hears anyone say you don’t belong here or whatever garbage they’re bound to say.” He shrugs. “So I’m gonna say you can stay.”

Sasuke frowns, unconvinced.

“Look, Sasuke,” Kiba says. “I’m a simple guy. The way I figure it, what happened to you was fucked up, then you did some other shit that was fucked up – including almost killing Naruto more than once, which not all of us have forgiven you for, by the way. There’s good and bad in you and in everyone else running around this stupid world. I’m not a fuckin’ shogi-master like Shikamaru or a crazy optimist like Naruto, I’m not trying to hear your life story. You’re just a guy who seemed okay when I grew up with him, then you seemed pretty nuts for a while, and now you seem okay again. If you’re here now, it doesn’t change any of the fucked-up shit that happened in the past, but you’ve got the rest of your life, right? You being here makes Naruto happy, and he wants you to be happy, so I don’t give a fuck about whatever you’ve done or not done as long as that’s true.”

“How do you know?” Sasuke asks, finding his voice.

Kiba stares at him blankly before comprehension kicks in. “How do I know you being here makes Naruto _happy_? For a smart guy, you are a fuckin’ moron, Uchiha. He lights up like the sun whenever you’re around. What do you want, diagrams?”

“I’ll have to leave again.”

“So make sure to come back more often than once every three years. It’s not hard.”

“I,” Sasuke says, and then stops. He can’t find any way to explain the trepidation that arises when he thinks about whether he, himself, deserves Naruto, or forgiveness, or any of it. He’s spent years running and then years trying to stop running, or at least trying to run towards and not away, but he hasn’t figured out how, quite yet. He still feels like every day has to be a fight, for all that he can convince civilians and talking snakes that he’s human enough to interact with. 

“You are so fucked up,” Kiba says, almost admiring. “But Naruto loves you. So just let him, yeah? It wouldn’t kill you to try it. Being happy, I mean.”

He wonders again: is it that easy?

Kiba claps Sasuke on the back when Sasuke doesn’t respond out loud, jolting him into the present. He seems completely unafraid of Sasuke, who has come close to killing several of Konoha’s best and brightest.

“Well, I’m headed back, I’ve done my bit,” Kiba says. “I’m sure Naruto’ll come up here soon, so just think about what I said, all right? I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah,” Sasuke says belatedly, but Kiba’s already walking away, talking to Akamaru and ignoring Sasuke.

“Shikamaru is buying me dinner for the rest of my life for this, I’m not a fucking therapist,” he hears Kiba mutter to the dog. “I should’ve stayed in Kusa and made Ino come back.”

Sasuke feels bizarrely like he’s been given a gift that he can’t fully discern the dimensions of, so he turns to face the village again. It’s still early enough that the only other people he can sense stirring in the streets are the civilian bakers, the ANBU he isn’t supposed to notice, and the border guards coming off-shift. There’s a rhythm to the morning that he didn’t understand the scope of when he was growing up here, before or after the massacre. An order that factors in the typical chaos of life in a shinobi village and makes something harmonious out of it.

For perhaps the first time, he thinks he’s seeing Konoha as Naruto must see it, maybe as Itachi saw it: living and breathing and limned with the fiery light of morning. Something precious and worth protecting, good and bad. The Naka River winds away from the walls and into the forest, sun glinting off the water. Here, a Yamanaka cousin opening the storefront of the flower shop. There, a pair of unfamiliar chuunin sparring on one of the training grounds.

This is the closest he’s felt to hearing the hum of natural chakra around him since meeting the Sage.

He feels – settled. It’s unfamiliar and it itches like a scab, like healing. He turns it over in his mind, studies every facet. Maybe Kiba’s right. Maybe it wouldn’t make him less strong or less anything, but only ever more. Maybe he could get used to it, or at least try to.

He wants very badly to get used to it.

He doesn’t acknowledge the presence that comes up behind him, but he doesn’t move away when Naruto leans in and wraps him in a loose hug, balancing his chin on Sasuke’s shoulder.

“Figured you’d be up here, I saw Kiba on his way back,” Naruto says. “Didn’t want you to be freaking out alone about whatever bullshit he told you.”

Sasuke shrugs, careful not to dislodge him. “I’m not freaking out,” he says, and finds it to be true. “Some of us like to be alone when we think.”

Naruto makes a face. “You’ve been doing all your thinking alone for years, which is why it took you so long to come back here,” he says. “Maybe you should let someone else help you out, for once.”

He can feel the corner of his mouth tugging upwards in a smile, and he doesn’t try to fight it. Maybe it can be this easy. “I’ll have some time to consider the idea.”

Naruto spins to look at him, astonished at whatever he finds written on Sasuke’s face. “You’re going to stay,” he says. It isn’t a question.

“Not for too long. Someone has to be out there protecting you, while you’re busy protecting Konoha.”

“Yeah, I know, and you’re convinced that’s gotta be your job,” Naruto says. “But you’re staying, for now.”

Sasuke smirks. “I heard a rumor that they’re inaugurating a new Hokage soon,” he says.

“That’s in seven months,” Naruto says. “You’re staying here for seven whole months?”

Maybe it is easy. Sasuke’s said it so many times in his head, he’s so close to convincing himself. It’s like taking a step into thin air and finding a ledge where he hadn’t been entirely sure there was one. “Don’t get so excited, it’s undignified,” he says.

“Fuck that,” Naruto says. “Seven months! You’re coming to my inauguration!”

“I’m coming to your inauguration,” Sasuke confirms, makes it tangible, imagines the future stretching out in front of him for longer than he’s been able to see in years. There’s a ledge that he can step onto.

Naruto has the broadest grin on his face. He looks ridiculous. Sasuke loves him so much that it feels like a hundred thousand candles lighting up in his chest simultaneously, like a song buried in sense-memory until Naruto unearthed it from under layers and layers of rock. He’d been wrong to doubt – it is easy, and not at all like standing still. It’s as easy as taking one step.

“You’ll see,” Naruto promises. “You know that, right? We’re going to change it all, Sasuke. We’re going to have peace, and you’re going to help me. We’ve got the foundations already, the ties from the Alliance are still there. We’re going to make sure there are no more kids dying, no more massacres or ROOT or crazy plant-guys and moon-goddesses, no more wars over nothing. It’s gonna be hard and I’ll have to deal with all sorts of shit from the elders and the clans and the fucking daimyo’s court, but we’ll have _peace_ , Sasuke.”

Gods help him, but Sasuke believes it. “Ambitious,” he says.

Naruto folds his hands behind his head, still grinning. “I’ve got Sakura to intimidate people and I’ve got you to tell me when something is a bad idea, or to fix it when I fuck up,” he says with complete faith in the ludicrous notion of Sasuke being a good candidate for either of those purposes.

“Maybe I’ll be so sick of you by the inauguration that I’ll leave for another three years the next day and not stick around to help you.”

Naruto bumps their shoulders together. “You and I both know that’s an empty threat. You won’t leave for that long.”

“Maybe I won’t,” Sasuke admits.

“You and your ‘maybes.’ Come on, I know you,” Naruto says again. “I believe in you.”

On some level, Sasuke has known this incomprehensible entry in Naruto’s personal creed for years, but hearing it still feels like a heavy stone shifting to reveal an open doorway where before there had only been a wall.

“I know,” Sasuke says, because he does. He does know, as surely as he knows that Naruto’s life is going to be wrapped around his own forever. It’s as much a fact as the world turning.

“Don’t let it get to your head,” Naruto says, but it’s as fond as the kiss he presses to Sasuke’s cheek before detaching himself and starting down the mountain. “Come on, I can make breakfast before I have to be at the Tower! Kakashi-sensei will want to see you, too!”

“Give me a minute, I’ll be right there,” Sasuke replies, and turns his face towards the horizon once more.

He’ll leave again, but he knows he won’t be away for too long. There’s someone waiting for him, here, and he’s done enough running for three lifetimes.

Naruto is halfway down the slope already. Sasuke takes a step towards him, and then another, and it’s easy, it’s so easy that he keeps going, knows with an ocean’s certainty that he could keep going for any distance as long as Naruto was at the end of it. And he is, right now in this moment.

Naruto turns and smiles again, and Sasuke, hearing the melody clearly in the air, walks on.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found [here](http://keensers.tumblr.com/) on tumblr. Thanks for reading!


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